This is the first of what will hopefully be many “How To” posts I make. While it’s technically less of a “How Do You Do…?” and more of a “how I do”, you’ll be able to find this, and all other how tos under that category.

Anyway. Back in August of 2008 (after having much fun working on “Maxwell Pink Tells Stories“) I decided to breathe new life into “AWSCBB”, which had previously been a standalone, page by page, website. Converting it to a blog has been interesting as I figure out how each section will be represented. Thankfully, WordPress and the themes and plugins developed for it have given me many creative ideas.

Since Weblog Tools Collection has been blogging about plugins lately (they even have a contest going on — inspired by moi — to guess how many plugins they are using), I decided to make a list of all the bells and whistles I use on this site so that you, too, may be inspired.

Active Plugins

Akismet » Automattic (url)Used by millions, Akismet is quite possibly the best way in the world to protect your blog from comment and trackback spam. It keeps your site protected from spam even while you sleep. To get started: 1) Click the “Activate” link to the left of this description, 2) Sign up for an Akismet API key, and 3) Go to your Akismet configuration page, and save your API key.

AVH Amazon » Peter van der Does (url)This plugin gives you the abillity to add multiple widgets which will display one or more random item(s) from your Amazon wishlist, baby registry and/or wedding registry. It also has the ability to show items, with their link, in posts and pages by use of shortcode.

FeedBurner FeedSmith » FeedBurner (url)Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.

Google XML Sitemaps » Arne Brachhold (url)This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.

Login LockDown » Michael VanDeMar (url)Adds some extra security to WordPress by restricting the rate at which failed logins can be re-attempted from a given IP range. Distributed through Bad Neighborhood.

Hello Dolly » Matt Mullenweg (url)This is not just a plugin, it symbolizes the hope and enthusiasm of an entire generation summed up in two words sung most famously by Louis Armstrong: Hello, Dolly. When activated you will randomly see a lyric from Hello, Dolly in the upper right of your admin screen on every page.

WP-UserOnline » Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan (url)Enable you to display how many users are online on your Wordpress site

WP Greet Box » Thaya Kareeson (url)Show a different message to your visitor depending on which site they are coming from. For example, you can ask Digg visitors to Digg your post, Google visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed, and more! Best of all, this plugin is compatible with various WordPress cache plugins.

WP Render Blogroll Links » Tanin Ehrami (url)Outputs your Blogroll links to a Page or Post. Add [wp-blogroll] to a Page or Post and all your Wordpress links/Blogrolls will be rendered. This extremely simple plug-in enables you to create your own Links page without having to write a custom template.The output can easily be styled with CSS. Each category with its links is encapsulated in a DIV with a classname called “linkcat”. All the links are attributed with the class “brlink”.

WP to Twitter » Joseph Dolson (url)Posts a Tweet when you update your WordPress blog or post a link, using your URL shortening service. Rich in features for customizing and promoting your Tweets.